What is "Mind?"

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Psilocyborg

climber
Apr 16, 2015 - 09:03pm PT
that discussion pretty much shows that the science of matter can be slippery and fleeting
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Apr 16, 2015 - 09:17pm PT
Jstan: Please cite the papers . . .


As if papers are the basis of your knowledge or the knowledge you think “you know.” (Most of what you know comes from what other people have told you or written down.) It would be more accurate to say what “you believe.”

The reign of experts in narrow fields occurs in micro territories. If you are a bona fide expert, there is probably only a handful of people who can comment and criticize on your work or thinking, often less than 20.


The world does not need more experts. We have plenty with much education and experience in their narrow fields, and by that, the understanding of our existence is hopelessly fragmented, biased, narrow-minded, and too often professionally self-serving. “More knowledge” is not helping. What we’re missing is wisdom.

What we could really use are generalists and integrators who can see more than their narrow areas, who can connect the dots to paint broader and more inclusive pictures, who can readily translate one language or one culture into another’s understanding, who can place themselves and us in a context from many perspectives, who can help to forge consensus because they can see other viewpoints, who can put things together rather than take them apart, who can value differences from the multiplicity yet see it as just one thing. We are desperate for people who are integrated themselves, unified, with rock solid sense of identity that comes from knowing themselves deeply. The people we are looking for are salts of the earth.

Narrower and narrower is making us narrower and narrower.

Pffffttttttt!
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Apr 16, 2015 - 10:11pm PT
Mass or energy, if it can be measured it has a 'physical' extent:




P.S. Don't shine a laser in your eyes or photons will become nothing...

What we’re missing is wisdom.

Unfortunately there is no wisdom in no thing. That said, if you meditate long enough you will gain insights into your own nature which can open doors to the opportunity for wisdom. But there is nothing to be learned or gained directly from no thing and that's because it's a perfect and utterly impenetrable mirror.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Apr 16, 2015 - 10:22pm PT


We are desperate for people who are integrated themselves, unified, with rock solid sense of identity that comes from knowing themselves deeply (MikeL)


Doc Savage fits the bill, plus strength of character and body. As a PhD chemist he could contribute commentary on physical extent as well.

On ST his avatar is BURT BRONSON.

Awaken this giant . . .


feralfae

Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
Apr 16, 2015 - 10:27pm PT
Bravo! MikeL.
Well said.

feralfae
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Apr 16, 2015 - 10:46pm PT
We are desperate for people who are integrated themselves, unified, with rock solid sense of identity that comes from knowing themselves deeply...

...and not evil or bent on ideas which may be harmful to others.

And what if people come to such a state, but only by way of a highly monastic existence - are they actually 'helping' or just staying out of the way?
jstan

climber
Apr 16, 2015 - 10:54pm PT
We are desperate for people who are integrated themselves, unified, with rock solid sense of identity that comes from knowing themselves deeply...

MikeL:
Are you not describing yourself here? Everyone defines themselves thusly.

Oh and papers on a subject present both data and a traceable record of how conclusions are supported. Your first sentence seems mixed up.
WBraun

climber
Apr 16, 2015 - 11:19pm PT
So what about your imaginary number called "i" .....
Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Apr 16, 2015 - 11:38pm PT
I think MikeL was sort of overreacting to the insistence by some of the specialists here on this thread that scientific knowledge can be validated only by scientific publication.

What he may have missed---but nevertheless hinted at---was in establishing the crucial operative distinctions between general integrative knowledge, or "wisdom" and the incremental methodological acquisitions of the scientific method.
This is a mistake often made by scientists from the other end as well--- sometimes mistaking their exclusivist ,specialized discoveries with the generalized and broadly conceptual.

This was a problem often dealt with by Bucky Fuller. In his book Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking

We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by overspecialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability. Thus the specialist’s brief for pinpointing brevity is dubious. In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding. Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual’s leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which in turn leads to war.

Here is one of my favorite Bucky quotes:

So long as mathematicians can impose up-and-down semantics upon students while trafficking personally in the non-up-and-down advantages of their concise statements, they can impose upon the ignorance of man a monopoly of access to accurate processing of information and can fool even themselves by thought habits governing the becoming behavior of professional specialists, by disclaiming the necessity of, or responsibility for, comprehensive adjustment of the a priori thought to total reality of universal principles. The everywhere-relative velocities and momentums of interactions, of energetic phenomena of universe, are central to the preoccupations and realizations of the comprehensive designer. The concept of relativity involves high frequency of re-established awareness, and progressively integrating consideration of the respective, and also integrated dynamic complexities of the moving and transforming frame of reference and of the integrated dynamic complexities of the observed, as well as of the series of integrated sub-dynamic complexities, in respect to each of the major categories of the relatively moving frames of reference, of the observer and the observed. It also involves constant reference of all the reciprocating sub-sets to the comprehensive totality of non-simultaneous universe, from which naught may be lost.

Pure Fuller there.

There'll be a test on this tomorrow.

One of the interesting biographical notes about Fuller was his establishing of a daily requirement for getting by on only 3-4 hours of sleep, sometimes less. He purportedly did this by taking numerous small naps of 20 minutes throughout the day, as well as a somewhat longer "core sleep". This approach at maximizing his waking time on Earth served him quite well until advanced age overtook him. Of course today these practices are generally known as "polyphasic sleep"

http://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/beginners/average-sleep/



healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Apr 16, 2015 - 11:46pm PT
MikeL would have to work on his definition. I mean, a scientist or mathematician who only a few people in the world understand and working largely isolated versus an adherent to Buddhist monasticism living and meditating in remote isolation - two different worlds? Or are they when compared to the average bloke or blokette's life?
jstan

climber
Apr 17, 2015 - 07:51am PT
One of the interesting biographical notes about Fuller was his establishing of a daily
requirement for getting by on only 3-4 hours of sleep, sometimes less. He purportedly did this
by taking numerous small naps of 20 minutes throughout the day, as well as a somewhat
longer "core sleep". This approach at maximizing his waking time on Earth served him quite
well until advanced age overtook him. Of course today these practices are generally known as
"polyphasic sleep"

I'll read the rest in a bit. Thanks for the post. I did the no sleep thing for ten years. I allowed no
more than five hours of sleep and worked double shifts. Sixteen hours a day six days out of the
week. Not good. Very hard on the heart and you really don't work as well as you might with more sleep.
There was one really valuable benefit however. Taking two days off a week is just enough time to realize
you don't appreciate all the work place politics and frankly stupid arguments. If you never leave work all
of that becomes normal and you can't remember a better way of living. It all becomes easier. Better to
work double time for six months and then take the next six months off. Or just get another job.

Tvash

climber
Seattle
Apr 17, 2015 - 09:37am PT
at first glance i thought doc savage was a poster child for the Perfect Aryan Man
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Apr 17, 2015 - 11:29am PT
Jstan: Are you not describing yourself here? Everyone defines themselves thusly.

God, no. Who do you think I am? From my side, I don’t know. Plumbing the depths of who or what I am has been a life-long process for me. The more I find out, the more I realize I really have no idea. What or who I am has become a complete mystery to me.

And, . . . you know that everyone sees themselves the way you describe for a fact somehow, or are you speculating? (I think you were making a dig, weren’t you? Funny.)

The comments in my post arise for me from teaching the subject of organizing. Teams, organizations, communities, civilizations, and even tribes arise because of specialization and the division of labor. Specialization offers the potential or possibility to do more impressive things technically or instrumentally, but specialization invariably mean that it’s difficult to get folks to work or be with each other harmoniously due to different knowledge, beliefs, values, norms, technical skills, objectives, etc. Getting folks and resources together is immensely difficult and seems to require very special people who can see bigger views than narrow disciplinary orientations found in expertise. Those who seem to succeed at it seem to have a much greater sense of who and what they are. They do not bob like corks in water.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and on many in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”
(The Bard)

“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”
(Sean O’Casey)
STEEVEE

Social climber
HUMBOLDT, CA
Apr 17, 2015 - 12:07pm PT
Getting folks and resources together is immensely difficult and seems to require very special people who can see bigger views than narrow disciplinary orientations found in expertise. Those who seem to succeed at it seem to have a much greater sense of who and what they are
I think healyje touched on this earlier with:
...and not evil or bent on ideas which may be harmful to others
Hitler comes to mind. He was a great organizer, yet I doubt he really saw "who" he was. He was completely lost and misguided toward the illusion of control. This is not meant as a dig, I just believe your statement is false. I respect much of what you have written (insightful, and provocative).

Back to what "is" a photon, well I tried to answer this earlier in this thread and now I believe with my feeble mind the true answer is a mystery and maybe ultimately a joke right there in front of our eyes to see the whole time, the light to show us the dark.
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Apr 17, 2015 - 03:09pm PT
Steevee:

You bet. A sense of work ethics is something I left out. (The more one looks at those things, the less one can find solid ground.)

I really like your idea of a joke, BTW. :-) Everything looks slippery, free form, ambiguous.
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 17, 2015 - 03:34pm PT
Healje, I'd be interested in hearing by what process you arrive at your pronouncements about meditation and no-thing and what you mean by those terms. My sense of it is you are guessing all across the board because your wonky descriptions sound a little like a porker talking about ball room dancing. There's a noise, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the phenomenon described. If you were to say, "There are no measurements nor yet figures to be derived from meditation itself," but applying worlds like "wisdom" to the equation moves you drift into Porkey's terrain - we can easily see why.

And Dingus, kindly look at what is being said with "no physical extent."

"Extent," by definition, means "the degree to which something has spread; the size, scale, degree, level, magnitude, scope of something itself."

Some of science and much of discursive processing involves reducing a phenomenon (reductionism) to smaller and smaller components and measuring aspects of those components. Common measurements concern the effect - such as the energetic or gravitational effect - some thing has on surrounding things.

Other measurements involve the "physical extent" or size, scale, and material aspects of the THING ITSELF, irregardless of how it effects other surrounding particles and time and space.

That is, when we are practicing reductionism, through a process of elimination, we are investigating what, exactly, is the actual physical extent of the thing in question. What stuff is it made out of and what are the measurements of same? If it's a rock, what are the minerals involved, etc. How the rock effects it's environment is NOT the question here. That's ANOTHER issue.

They tell us that in the case of bosens and photos etc. that there is no physical stuff or extent involved at all. That they are sans mass. If you have other information per this material, kindly present it.

Now the question becomes - when a phenomenon has NO MASS, no stuff, no physical extent in and of itself (irregardless of how it effects external stuff), is this phenomenon a "thing" in the normal sense of the word - in and of itself? And if you are saying it is, then what does this thing - in and of itself - consist of?

Again, in this sense, in the strict usage of "physical extent," never minding a phenomenons effect on external stuff, what IS a bosen or a photon? Energy? What is energy - never minding the measurement or the capacity to do work.

JL
cintune

climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
Apr 17, 2015 - 04:06pm PT
Zen & the Art of Moving the Goalposts.
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Apr 17, 2015 - 04:47pm PT
Healje, I'd be interested in hearing by what process you arrive at your pronouncements about meditation and no-thing and what you mean by those terms. My sense of it is you are guessing all across the board because your wonky descriptions sound a little like a porker talking about ball room dancing. There's a noise, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the phenomenon described. If you were to say, "There are no measurements nor yet figures to be derived from meditation itself," but applying worlds like "wisdom" to the equation moves you drift into Porkey's terrain - we can easily see why.

Better read my last couple of pronouncements again...

And as if you could describe the "phenomenon"? So far, over the course of 5500 posts, you haven't been able to say anything substantive about it whatsoever. So on exactly what basis is it you judge?

NO MASS

In no way - implicitly or explicitly - does "NO MASS" mean no physical extent and that is the wonky world of physics...
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Apr 17, 2015 - 06:06pm PT
"irregardless"?

please say it ain't so...
WBraun

climber
Apr 17, 2015 - 06:16pm PT
Their whole physics conclusion is ultimately useless without ultimately understanding what "Life" is.

Modern science has no clue what life really is.

Only guessing .....

Their biggest guess is; "In the future we will know".

"In the future we will have a machine that tells us what "life" is."

These people are insane ....
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